Coding Dojo Latam Online

We want to solve the skills gap in Latin America by providing online synchronous immersive coding courses, with the best curriculum, learning management system, and instructors in the market.

This is a great opportunity for workers that are looking to up-skill or re-skill their capacities, and unemployed individuals that want to learn abilities that are high in demand in the market, with the objective of getting a high-quality job fast or entering the world of entrepreneurship.

This is also a great time to learn online, due to the current health crisis.

Between 2016 and 2017, the average unemployment rate in the region increased from 7.9% to 8.4%, which is equivalent to a total of 26.4 million people without work.

The average unemployment for 2019 based on 12 countries was 7.53%.

This number is only going to increase due to the digital transformation trends, and the fallout from coronavirus crisis.

In Latin America, more than four in 10 firms say they have difficulty finding workers with the right skills, making the region the one with the biggest skills gap in the world.

We need to train new workers fast in the technical and soft skills needed in the 21st. century. 

Coding Dojo has several years of experience transforming students lives, with unprecedented success, and wants to expand its impact into Latin America.

Since 2013, Coding Dojo has helped more than 5000 students from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels transform into professional developers who go on to be hired by start-ups and world-class companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft.

In January 2020, Coding Dojo started implementing coding courses in Santiago, Valparaíso and Temuco, Chile, for low income individuals. So, the company already has experience in a Latin American country.

In general, students enter our programs if they want to re-skill or up-skill their abilities, and get a high-quality job fast.

We normally receive students 18 years old and older. 25% only have a High School diploma or GED, 30% are unemployed when applying to the bootcamp. 35% have 0 to 50 hours of programming experience. More than 50% have less than 100 hours, being beginners in the field.

Coding Dojo provides a 14-week accelerated online bootcamp in software development training, and other programs such as Front-End development, 1 stack part-time course, bootcamp in Data Science, among others. All of these programs can be available for students, depending in factors such as if they have full-time or part-time availability and their area of interest.

Our Full Time Onsite Bootcamp will teach students more than coding - they will learn how to solve problems and be self-sufficient developers.

When they are fully immersed in our full-stack curriculum, the students will master the fundamental building blocks of web and software development, making them a highly valuable, desirable asset throughout their career.Our dynamic curriculum has been refined and optimized over the last ten years by our founding members - a team of seasoned Silicon Valley and international software developers and tech executives-.

Coding Dojo is one of the highest-rated coding boot camps in the industry, and the only coding boot camp in the world to teach three full technology stacks in a single 14-week program (total of 560 hours of training).

The online program is synchronous (the instructor is online with the students) and uses several platforms to create the best experience for students. Coding Dojo has a in-house online learning platform (LMS) and proprietary content and material. Coding Dojo uses data, algorithms and machine learning to understand students learning experiences, and constantly improve on our curriculum. We combine our own LMS with platforms such as Slack and Zoom, to make the online experience as complete as possible for our students.

The reasons why our solution is innovative are:

1. New approach: We are using our existing and proprietary technology -our online learning platform- to teach 100% online. To make this happen, we are training ourselves with new teaching methodologies and will use a group of platforms to make the experience for our students as similar to our onsite experience as possible: In addition to our LMS, we will use Zoom, Slack, Google Calendar, Calendly, and awwapp.

2. New Population: We will modify our content (translated into Spanish) to open our courses to students in Latin America.

3.Change in Process: By adapting our onsite courses to a synchronous online format, our solution will reach a broader audience, including several countries of Latin America at the same time.

Our mission and long term expected outcome it to transform lives through programming literacy.

We do this by achieving our short term outcome of enabling graduates to find and secure jobs in the tech market. 

Our outputs are the students that graduate from our programs (more than 5000). This is also a very high rate. 9 out of 10 students that join Coding Dojo programs, finish that program successfully.

Our activities to accomplish these outputs are an unique immersive methodology that combines a demand driven curriculum, a turn-key online learning platform, project-based teaching and high quality instruction. This is complemented by career services support and connections and networking opportunities with recruiters and industry representatives.

Since 2013, Coding Dojo has helped more than 5000 students from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels transform into professional developers who go on to be hired by start-ups and world-class companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Currently most of this students go through classes in one of our campuses in Seattle, Silicon Valley, Oakland, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Orange County, Arlington, Boise and Tulsa.

We expect to train a total of 300 students in Latin America during 2020.

In the future, we expect to train a total of 3000 students in Latin America annually.

We expect to train successfully 300 Latin American students during 2020 and within 5 years, we expect to be training a total of 3000 students, annually.

To grow our impact, we also plan to partner with local Universities and other educational institutions in a model where Universities allow the use of their infrastructure for the course and Coding Dojo allows the use of its methodology and learning platform. We have done this in the USA, and we will replicate that model across Latin America.

We need the financial capacity to grow across Latin America. This includes staff, online platform configuration and servers, local campuses, and marketing and sales.

In terms of technical barriers, we need to find the right talent, that speaks English and Spanish, and train them in our teaching methodology and technical curriculum, so that they can be instructors for our program.

We need to gain local knowledge of operational differences and IP protection in the different countries.

Culturally, we need to show the programs value and impact, because this kind of program is still new in Latin American countries.

Market barrier: Pricing is an important part of the local strategy. Average income in Latin American countries is less than in the USA.

Financial capacity: We have some funds to use, and we are also searching for local investors and local funds to support us in this growth.

Technical barriers: Using different platform to search for the right talent. Establishing a formal certification and training process for new prospective instructors.

Legal: Having conversations with local legal agencies and consultancy firms.

Cultural: This can be solved with the right marketing and promoting the program to the correct audience, specially using online marketing.

Market barrier: We will reduce the tuition thinking about average income in LATAM. We will give paying facilities to participants and scholarships. We will also partner with local governments and companies that could be interested in sponsoring local talent.

In January 2020 we started the implementation of 7 courses in the Chilean cities of Santiago, Valparaiso and Temuco. These are part-time courses that teach Front-End development or Java Full-stack development.

Most of the 120 students (approx.) are low-income workers or unemployed individuals looking for new opportunities.

This program is executed in partnership with Inacap (the biggest technical university in the country) and is funded by the Government of Chile.

We are planning to grow with other courses in Chile and other countries of the region, and with an online program to broaden our impact across the continent.

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Coding Dojo has approx. 80 full-time employees and 10 contractors.

As mention before, Coding Dojo - Since 2013- has helped more than 5000 students from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels transform into professional developers who go on to be hired by start-ups and world-class companies. We have the experience and knowledge to make this happen.

Our dynamic and market-driven curriculum has been refined and optimized over the last ten years by our founding members - a team of seasoned software developers and tech executives - Graduates from Stanford, MIT and other top Universities.

Michael Choi is the founder of Coding Dojo. He graduated from Caltech and Stanford. He started programming when he was 8 years old. He and other top software developers created the content and methodologies that we now teach to the world.

Richard Wang is the CEO of Coding Dojo. He is a Graduate from MIT. Originally from China, he experience first-hand the need of re-invention in the USA. He took the 14-week Coding Dojo bootcamp to start his career in the country. The rest is history...he leads Coding Dojo operations, always considering the needs of our students first.

Sebastián Espinosa is the leader of this project and Managing Director of Coding Dojo LATAM. He is a Stanford graduate and a Singularity University alumni. Prior to this role, he was Managing Director of Coding Dojo at Silicon Valley. Sebastián is originally from Chile and has extensive knowledge in Latin America, having worked in NGOs and companies that have extensive presence in the region.

1. Recognitions: We partner with organizations that recognized our work and validate our mission, such as MIT. We are the winners of the inclusive innovation prize, in 2016.

2. Universities: We partner with them to offer our bootcamps to students, where Universities provide their infrastructure and we provide our methodology and content. Examples: Bellevue College, UCLA, Inacap (Chile).

3. Local Governments: They provide the funding to train local underprivileged students. Example: Chicago Codes, Government of Chile.

4. Companies: We partner with them to offer our content for re-skilling or up-skilling employees. Example: Amazon, Microsoft.

5. Workforce development institutions: We partner with them to create a broader program that includes coding classes and also support while the employee is at work. Example: Apprenticeship programs with WTIA in Seattle.

6. NGOs: We partner with non-profits to give scholarships or reduce tuitions for special segments of the population. Example: Partnership with Lesbians Who Tech.

In terms of impact, our beneficiaries are our students. We change their lives by teaching them skills and capacities that are and will be needed in the 21st century. By doing this, we increase significantly their opportunities to get a well-paying job and/or to create new opportunities through entrepreneurship.

Our business model is currently 80% B2C (business to consumer), where tuition is paid by students. Normally, we give students payment facilities and we give a percentage of scholarships if they cannot pay the tuition. We also partner with organization and local governments that can pay the tuition for students.

20% of our business model is B2B (business to business). We partner with companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100 organiations, to retrain their workers and prepare them for new opportunities inside or outside the company.

As a Company, Coding Dojo is sustainable. As explained in the prior question, our model is 80% B2C and 20% B2B.

In terms of the operations in Latin America, we are planning to fund our growth with a combination of donations and grants, selling our online and onsite courses and possibly raising investment capital.

In the longer term, we are planning to replicate the model Coding Dojo has in the USA (80% B2C, 20% B2B), considering local and cultural differences, such as average income per person, knowledge of prospective students of the programming market, language, among others.

Having the TPrize partnership can help our company to open doors through Latin America.

The funds will allow us to do the first online courses opened to the Latin American market, in Spanish. It will allow us to test the market and adapt accordingly, to give the best experience possible and the best outcomes for students.

The funds will help us in the process of "training the trainers". This is a critical process that needs to be done at the beginning of the project and consists of: Searching for the right talent, doing cultural fit evaluation, training the trainers online and onsite (instructors need to do the course as students and shadow other instructors as apprentices) and passing a rigorous technical exam.

We will also need Legal assistance to understand the best ways to operate in different countries and to protect our IP, material and teaching methodologies. 

Also having mentors in digital marketing and sales for Latin America and support with capacity building and growth would be very helpful.

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In Latin America, we would like to partner with:

- Local marketing and sales experts, to support us in understanding the market and get to the right people with the right message.

- International Organizations, such as the IDB Bank, to support us with additional funding and to promote our efforts to impact positively the local work force.

- Local governments, that can be interested in funding tuition for students of their respective countries or communities.

- Technical talent recruiting companies, that can help us to search for the instructional talent we are looking for.

- Companies interested in receiving talent: Companies that would be interested in partnering with the best coding school in the world, to receive our students in their companies. This can be using different formats such as internships, apprenticeships, as contractors or as full-time employees.

-Universities: We could implement our bootcamps in their facilities (in case of onsite) and also give students a doble certification (Coding Dojo + local university X).